China is a destination on which opinions divide. Especially when thinking about China with kids, if you ask around you’ll get more than one opinion. Before I went there I got a confusing shower of information, ranging from ‘don’t ever go there for any reason’ to ‘my sister went there with her four kids and they had lots of fun’.
They told me it’s impossible to find bread. They told me the Chinese don’t speak a word of English, and even the way they count to ten isn’t the way we know. They told me they have pastries filled with sweet green Beans and that it’s a delicacy. And that they eat Pig’s tails. They told me that the views are incredible but the people aren’t nice. They told me the south is awesome. They told me the north is awesome. A couple I met in a guesthouse in Pokhara (Nepal) gave me a Hebrew-Chinese dictionary and out of genuine concern warned me not to go there. Anyway..
I was thinking whether to go to China or India. But I’ve already been to India (three time) and the tickets to China were really cheap and I had to escape the monsoon in Nepal and anyway I’ve been meaning to go to Mongolia and China is really just on the way…so should I give it up??
No. so I went there.
And I was terrified. Alone with three kids in a country where no one speaks English. Where they eat pig’s tails. petrifying.
We landed in Chengdu where we spent two weeks including a trip to the panda reserve and a five-day trip to Jiuzhai valley and a visit to two national parks: Jiuzhaigou and Huanglong. A trip that was breathtaking in its beauty. As well as a meeting with a fascinating Tibetan populace that was entirely different from anything else we’ve seen in China. From Chengdu we journeyed a few days to Beijing. A journey that included all different types of buses and trains.
We started the journey in Xian, a city whose main tourist attraction is the Tera Cota warriors.
From there we moved on to Ping Yao, an ancient town that is amazingly well preserved. We spent a few days there walking among the ancient alleys, staying in a guesthouse that used to be a traditional Chinese home, with a charming open courtyard and stunning woodworks that covered the whole front of the building.
The town is surrounded by walls and has in it a lot of interesting building with huge historical and cultural value. It was very interesting to travel in its streets and enter ancient temples, tea houses, castles. Chinese style gardens, tall heavy wooden doors.
The food was very different from what we’ve had so far. But just as spicy.
We fell in love with that small picturesque town and decided to stay there longer than planned, and give up on a few more stops on the way to Beijing.
And so we found ourselves one sunny day, torn away from the feeling of being a million years ago and getting thrown right back into the 21st century in a ride in a cool express train that got us to Beijing in only a few hours.
I felt like I was in an airplane.
We had three days to spend in Beijing. We walked on the great wall, of course. With mixed feelings. Because the story of the wall isn’t a simple story. A lot of people died building it, and were buried underneath it. The weather was hot and humid. And of course, the thousands of other tourists that also came to walk the wall haven’t really improved the experience.
We went to the forbidden city, but after three hours waiting in lines in the hot sun we decided to give up.
We took part in a traditional tea ceremony, which was very nice and educating (and delicious).
We took photos with the ‘bird’s nest’.
The local food in Beijing was tastier than anywhere else that we’ve been to in china. In Chengdu for example we avoided local food and made do with more western alternatives- Pizza Hut and Starbucks to begin with and afterwards we found a small Sushi place, cheap and excellent and ate there all the time (and laughed that we went all the way to china only to eat SushiJ). In fact, it’s only in Beijing that we found good Chinese food.
click here for a post with many lesser known great attractions in Beijing
After three days we took a sleeper bus, 17 hours to the border town Erenhot. Everyone says that it’s a boring town lacking charm, but I actually liked it.
And at the end of a full month in China, we crossed the border to Mongolia, to an experience, that while we didn’t know it yet, would be one of the more amazing ones we’ve been through.
What was fun for me and the kids in china:
♦ The Chinese people were a pleasant surprise and in fact most of the people we’ve met were exceptionally nice. Even if they couldn’t understand a single word we said.
♦ The trip to the national parks was the highlight. We’re talking a work of art by mother nature. As Wonderful and as breathtaking as only nature knows how to make.
♦ The Panda reserve in Chengdu was nice, to see the Pandas living their lives, the cubs playing and roughhousing- it was an exciting experience.
♦ The express train was really fun.
♦ The small town, Ping Yao, was a tasty treat.
What was less fun for me and the kids in china:
♦ The food. We definitely couldn’t get along with the food.
♦ Communication problems made everything feel difficult and heavy… even in hotels in Beijing, where you’d expect at least a bit of English- they couldn’t answer me when I wanted to know how to get to the great wall.
♦ And that’s also how it was with getting public transportation tickets. If we didn’t get along with some nice locals, there’s no way we could even buy bus or train tickets or even understand where they’re going and where they stop and when do we need to change and when to get off.
♦ The big cities are very modern. It’s nice- in China there’s everything, everything is huge, everything is spectacular. But to find places a bit more ‘Chinese’ you have to work hard.
♦ Anyway, in Chengdu for example there are a few nice gardens good for a walk, to sit in tea houses and watch the locals play their Chinese games that now everyone is downloading to their smartphones…
Sources worth checking:
The national park that is also a world heritage site and part of the biosphere plan: